What do chatbots and shoes have in common?

Chatbots are like shoes. If they fit well, they will make our life easier and more comfortable, if they don’t they will only cause problems and stress. It is important to choose them wisely, making sure they are built well, and that they fit the needs of our company. Bad choices will have consequences that, while not immediately evident, will damage us in the long run.

Just like you wouldn’t use the same shoe to walk on the beach and to climb a mountain, you shouldn’t use a chatbot designed for, say, marketing campaigns, to do customer service. Likewise, it is important not to confuse chatbots designed for short-term initiatives like an ad campaign with those designed to be a permanent addition to the company’s communication arsenal.

What to look for in a chatbot

To choose the right chatbots we first need to have a clear idea of why we need one and what tasks it will need to complete. For the moment we’ll assume that this point is already clear, and we will touch back on it at the end of the article.

Next, we’ll need to think of where the chatbot will interact with clients. Some chatbots are optimized for platforms like WhatsApp, others work best on websites and others still are built to be flexible. Some might argue that flexibility is always better but, depending on the company’s needs, a single channel bot may actually be a better choice.

Likewise, we’ll need to decide what level of complexity our chatbot needs. An AI-based chatbot capable of reading human emotions and converse in 10 languages may be great, but, going back to our analogy, it may be like using a waterproof high-tech boot to walk on the beach.

Looking inwards it is important to understand what data the chatbot will need to have in order to do its job. In simple cases, this could be just a series of FAQs. However, most serious chatbots will require some sort of interface with the company’s systems and may even need to fetch some data directly from the internet.

What makes great chatbots great

In most cases having clear answers to the how, where, and why of a chatbot, will give us a good idea of what kind of chatbot our company needs, but it is only half the story. The other half is having a good understanding of what this technology is and the opportunities that are available.

Most chatbot clients start off with a simple problem to solve, things like the need to answer some common questions or pre-qualify a lead, but don’t realize that there are a lot more things that the system could do for them. This, inevitably, leads to lower efficiency levels and will likely lead to future expenses as the chatbot is updated to take advantage of other opportunities.

Great chatbots all start with a good analysis of the company that helps the chatbot designer understand how the company works and create a bot that will fit well and take advantage of all available opportunities.

To get started with this analysis, reach out to our team of experts using the contact link below.